Announcing Professional Agile Leadership with Evidence-Based Management Training (PAL-EBM) from Scrum.org
I have been an accredited Evidence-based Management Expert with Scrum.org for the last 7 years and I have been using the Evidence-based Management Guide to encourage leaders to make decisions based on evidence instead of gut feel.
Hiring a Professional Product Owner
One of my customers is asking me about the accountabilities of a Product Owner and how they break down. While I had seen many things around the Scrum Master for my post on Hiring a Professional Scrum Master , this was a little bit more of a discovery session, which is why I asked some of my trusted colleagues at Scrum.org to help out.
Stop normalizing unprofessional behaviour in the name of agility
In Scrum Events across the world, I hear repeated the phrase “that’s how agile works” when describing behaviours that are both unprofessional and the very opposite of an agile mindset. These behaviours will inhibit agility and are a result of a lack of understanding of the underlying principles.
Hiring a Professional Scrum Master
One of my customers is hiring for the Scrum Master Role and asked if I had a handy-dandy Scrum Master Job Spec that they could use. I did not, but there have been a few good ones floating around in the ether so I thought that pulling one together would be a good idea anyway. Here is my best effort to use the existing job postings, and combine them with the latest version of the Scrum Guide.
Scrum is made up of Influencers, Entrepreneurs, and Makers
In the empirical world, we have 3 key skill areas of accountability that are needed to effectively deliver products of the highest possible value! We need Influencers that can provide leadership and create environments within which groups of people can organise the work. I consider this the Leadership Track where you have Scrum Masters, Coaches, and CEO. We need Entrepreneurs who can have a vision and project knowledge and understanding of that vision to the people that need to make that vision happen. This is the Value Track and may be made up of Product Owners, Analysts, and Subject Matter Experts. Last we have the Makers who are the ones who do the work that brings the product to life. They are on the Technical Track and focus on turning the vision into a reality. They have many skills and may have coders, testers, and other experts…
Become the leader that you were meant to to be
Leadership is not about control, but about inspiring those around you. Managers transition to Leaders As organisations move towards modern management practices there will be less of a need for Managers. However that does not mean that those same people are not needed! Their role is shifting from managing people, to managing effectiveness and leading people!
All technical debt is a risk to the product and to your business.
If you were buying a car, or a TV, you as the purchaser would do your best to understand the product that you are buying, the quality tradeoffs, and the capabilities.
Professional Kanban Trainer for Applying Professional Kanban
The Scrum Guide only contains the minimum necessary to create an empirical process control system for managing risk. The new Kanban Guide reflects the minimum that you need to do to create a strategy for optimizing the flow of value through a visual, pull-based system.
What is Taylorism, and why Waterfall is just the tip of the iceberg!
For many people the traditional project management methodologies (see PMI / PRINCE2) are the root of the problems that birthed Waterfall. I assert that this is the tip of the iceberg. These methodologies are just a symptom of a greater problem that has its roots in the changes made during the industrial revolution. These changes, while they generated great amounts of wealth and many jobs around the world, dehumanised work and destroyed the essence of value and discovery that brought humanity to where it is now. It created processes that turned people into little more than sophisticated robots and enshrined that thinking into the very core of how we do things.
Sprint Goal is an Immediate Tactical Goal
In the The Evidence-Based Management Guide we talk about the Intermediate Strategic Goal and I likened that to the Product Goal in the 2020 Scrum Guide . If we also think of each Sprint as a tactical move towards fulfilling that Product Goal then the Sprint Goal becomes an Intermediate Tactical Goal that moves us towards our current Intermediate Strategic Goal.
Story Points & Velocity are a sign of an unsuccessful team
Story Points and velocity have been used for many years in the Scrum community and have been engrained so much in the way that things are done that most folks believe that they are part of Scrum. The accepted wisdom is that Scrum Teams are supposed to use User Stories, Story Points, and Velocity to measure their work.
Evidence-based Management: Gathering the metrics
Gathering the metrics for Evidence-based Management in software organisations can be a strenuous task and I have a number of customers that are fretting on what to collect and from where. Here I try to create an understanding of the ‘what’ that we need to collect.
There is no place like production
Value is such a subjective thing that we will often be wrong, and there is no way around that wrongness. In order to minimise the wrongness and maximise the amount of value that we deliver we need to have a clear understanding of what our users need, how they are using the product, and validate our new value as soon as we can. Without validation we only have assumptions and assumptions can be dangerous.
Product Goal is an Intermediate Strategic Goal
The Evidence-Based Management Guide describes not only a Strategic Goal but also an Intermediate Strategic Goal that is needed to evaluate and adapt your progress towards your intended visions of your product.
If your backlog is not refined then you are doing it wrong
Most Scrum Teams that I encounter don’t do refinement of their Product Backlog and try to work on things that they don’t understand correctly. However, if you get to the Sprint Planning event and your backlog is not ready, then you are doing it wrong. If what you build is not of good quality then you should read about Defenition of Done .
Getting started with a Definition of Done (DoD)
In my last post about Professional software teams creating working software David Corbin made a good point. How do you determining what “Free from fault or defect” means? Since that is different for each Product and may change over time you need to focus on Quality and reflecting that quality in a Definition of Done (DoD).
A better way than staggered iterations for delivery
There is a better way than staggered iterations for delivery that will keep you on the path to agility. Staggered iterations lead to more technical debt and lower quality software.
You are doing it wrong if you are not using test first
Many teams are struggling with delivering modern software because they are not building with Test First Principals. Test First gives us the assurance that we have built the correct thing, that what we built is what the customer asked for and that when we change things we don’t break anything inadvertently.
Professional Scrum teams build software that works
I am always surprised at the number of teams that release undone work to production. I understand that one may need a few sprints, or many if you inherited something nasty, to pay back that debt, but if it’s more then you are not a Professional Scrum Team . The sheer amount of software that I have that is buggy, slow, or just not finished makes me think that there are few professional Scrum Teams out there!
The Sprint Goal is a commitment for the Sprint Backlog
In the 2020 Scrum Guide Ken and Jeff augmented the idea of the Sprint Goal . The Sprint Goal is a commitment to ensure transparency and focus against progress during a Sprint.
Release planning and predictable delivery
Many organisations wrestle with the seeming incompatibility between agile and release management, and they struggle with release planning and predictable delivery. Updated to reflect the 2020 Scrum Guide!
The Product Goal is a commitment for the Product Backlog
In the 2020 Scrum Guide Ken and Jeff introduces the idea of the Product Goal . The Product Goal is a commitment to ensure transparency and focus against progress.
Update to the Scrum Guide on the 25th Anniversary of the Scrum Framework
It has been 25 years since Scrum was first created by Ken Schwaber and Jeff Sutherland and it has gone through many revisions. The last major revision was in 2017 and this update represents a simplification for 2020.
Online is the new co-located
In light of the new normal and the last 20 years of technological progress, we need to re-define co-location as we no longer need to be in the same room as each other to get the 80% of communication that is non-verbal . If we are participating in an online event, we should try our best to keep our cameras on so that we can all read those non-verbal queues.
The fallacy of the rejected backlog item
There is a frustrating misunderstanding of reality when one thinks that the Product Owner can reject a single story at the Sprint Review. This is the fallacy of the rejected backlog item and the misguided belief that this backlog item can just be left out of this delivery. That backlog item that was chosen by the Development Team at the Sprint Planning event to help them achieve the Sprint Goal. The Sprint Goal that created focus and has the entire Development Team working in the same area of the codebase.
Evolution not Transformation: This is the Inevitability of change
There is no such thing as an Agile Transformation, Digital Transformation, DevOps Transformation, or any of the Whatever Transformation that you can think of or have been sold. You can’t buy agility, and you certainly can’t install it. There is no end state, no optimal outcome, No best practices. We are no longer factory workers .
Luddites have no place in the modern organisation
In our Professional Agile Leadership training , we talk about changing your organisations hiring practices to hire more of the right sort of people to create the company that you want, not the company that you have. Hire the right people also implies that you will have to, within your cultural constraints, de-hire the wrong people.
Many organisations are lured to SAFe by the song of the Sirens
These Sirens take advantage of the lack of understanding of what business agility is trying to change and lures unsuspecting C-suite executives into parting with their cash for what is effectively someone else’s business process. They are changing their entire organisation, not because of a business challenge, but because they are told to.
Configuring Microsoft Teams for Live Virtual Training
Like most tools, if you want to run successful training in Microsoft Teams you need to do some homework and some configuration before your class. You can just jump in and wing it, but that will not provide a good experience for your students. Currently, I have run more than 6 Live Virtual Training in Microsoft Teams and in a few hours, my 7th will start. I have also recently had to set up Microsoft Teams for my good friend and colleague Russell Miller so that he can also run classes on the platform.
Delivering Live Virtual Classes in Microsoft Teams and Mural
With the new normal , I have been delivering all of my Professional Scrum classes and consulting online. I have tried many tools from Zoom and Webex to Miro and Word. The combination that I have found gives the most security, flexibility, and features are Microsoft Teams with Mural.
